John Weaver (1)

While I found this book quite thorough despite its breadth and appreciated the author's efforts in summarizing and analyzing a wide variety of attitudes and treatments, on the whole I had more issues with the book than appreciations. To be clear, I think Weaver demonstrates his thesis fairly well, and I don't disagree with it, but this book is not quite as effective or as persuasive as it could be.

For my own part, I've had first- or second-hand interactions with just about all the perspectives Weaver addresses. I was raised in a Pentecostal/Charismatic church that practiced "intercession"/exorcism, broke "soul-ties," and the rest. Family friends were nouthetic counselors and Theophostic ministers (though we always considered their practices absurd). I had friends who were members of IFB churches and personally used Abeka and Bob Jones curriculum for much of my homeschooling career. I once skimmed a copy of Pigs in the Parlor, which gave me nightmares. As a teen I was dragged to Acquire the Fire and a conference using The Battlefield of the Mind as a key text. So really none of this stuff was really new to me, though I was fascinated to learn the origins of some concepts which had been taken for granted by my church, friends, or family.

And, as an emerging/ex-evangelical with social anxiety who's dealt with serious depressive episodes, I fully agree that many of the ideas presented by evangelicals as "health care" just lead to the patient feeling worse and more hopeless. Reading Happiness is a Choice only increased one of the worse depressive periods I've ever had in my life, and being in an "apostolic" church where ecstatic conformity was expected hardly helped. Thank God, quite literally, that's over.

But back to the point: Weaver does a good job of covering everything, but in doing so, he overfills the book and his thesis. Closely analyzing just one or two of the streams of thought would make for a good and interesting book: looking at every possible variety is just too much and doesn't allow for equal coverage or equal applicability of his arguments. And because of my familiarity with much of what he covers, I saw some glaring holes and overstatements at times that could likely have been avoided if the focus were narrower.

Additionally, I had some difficulty dealing with the constant MLA in-text citations: while as an English major I appreciate the method, it does not seem appropriate for what is essentially a social science topic. Footnotes would have been much less intrusive. I understand the format is likely due to the author's being an English professor rather than a psychologist or psychiatrist, and that's another drawback from my perspective. If the author had really wanted to make his arguments seem authoritative, he ought to have found a co-author in a psych-related field.

As the book stands, it seems as if the author had a bad experience (which he admits) with evangelical mental health care and so set out with a negative bias to bash the whole concept. The fact that he uses loaded and deprecating language towards most everything he relates doesn't help. The book would have been more compelling, actually, had he used less language telling the reader how to feel about an idea and more explaining it or how it compares with the mainstream version. Along with a narrower thesis and more authoritative weight, more measured language would go a long way to making this interesting and helpful idea into a better book.… (mehr)

When I initially read in the preface that the author did not have any background in psychology or psychiatry it made me feel quite skeptical. A book examining mental health care, I assumed, would be a little our of reach for someone with no background in the field. I found, however, that the author did a very neat and thorough job in presenting the issues with evangelical mental health care. The writing was less tedious than I expected. I would recommend for reading all the way through or just for picking out topics you're inclined towards.… (mehr)

This was a very hard book to read. It promised so much, but delivered so little. On the plus side it attempts an exhaustive history of evangelical, charismatic and Pentecostal changes in deliverance, healing and biblical counseling ministries for the entire 20th century. On the minus side this reads as very dry academic wanderings without a punchline. Other than the fact that the author has a serious chip on his shoulder, and severely distrusts all these minisitries I could not tell you what the point of this book is. Not recommended unless you are an academic from one of these traditions that needs to attempt to understand outside criticism.… (mehr)